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2.  The abstinent outcome of recovery groups is quite low, in the single-digit percentiles (AA 1989 Triennial Survey; California Dept. of Drug and Alcohol Programs). Sometimes clients of public agencies get the impression that their personal difficulties in understanding or making use of recovery groups or addiction treatment concepts are unusual, or that failure to understand program content will result in their inability to abstain. This can be quite discouraging.
3. It is generally agreed that substance abusers who quit on their own thereby prove that they do not have “the problem,” (addictive disease), in the first place. This is the immediate, cost-effective option that is overlooked by many in recovery, as well as by the social service system. In essence, problem drinkers and drug users who quit independently thereby “opt-out of addict-identity,” and are then able to navigate in society free from the stigma attached to addictive disease. Until AVRT®, their expertise has been unavailable to addicted people.
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Though the three items above are only the tip of an iceberg, they have great implications for many chronically addicted people who may have the capacity to simply abstain as a matter of principle rather than as the anticipated outcome of program participation.
Toward this end, the proposed Opt-Out Center will disseminate information on planned, permanent abstinence (AVRT®) to the addicted population at large, and offer advocacy and case management services to prevent discrimination resulting from addict-identity when one has elected planned, permanent abstinence in lieu of other prescribed remedies. The problem of addict-identity affects those with a history of
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alcohol, prescription, and street drugs.
For example, when people are required to attend recovery group meetings in order to qualify for housing, employment, welfare benefits, or medical care, the Opt-Out Center may advocate that self-sustained abstinence
be substituted for recovery groups and other addiction centered services.
When employers expect that probationary or prospective employees attend recovery groups, an Opt-Out Center representative might explain that some individuals do better individually than as group members, and such employees might be honored for their integrity and self-reliance rather than discriminated against.
Would some...
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